UngeheuerLich
Legend
In 2014 there were massive damage rules. Deal half max hp in one go and you force a Con save, that has quite severe effects.My fireball comment was never about how effective it was. More of a comment that with a martial build it's difficult (if not impossible) to strike that many targets for a decent chunk of damage, whereas the wizard can offhand hit up to a score of opponents with a single spell.
It is a bit annoying, however, that splitting attacks over multiple targets tends to be subpar to focus-firing on a single target. I wish the system had some better payoff for fending off multiple attackers over "absolutely fine until dead" play.
Fireball was often enough able to do that to enemies.
Also: one fireball is not that great. The second one might kill the enemies. All of them. So even if one enemy is not dropped immediately. The payoff is that next time all are dropped.
Then there isnalsonrange advantage. If you can somehow slow the enemies down after dropping the fireball, chances are you get a second one out before the enemies can even do serious things to you.
So if the area damage is two times higher or so than the damage you could do to a single target, are damage is generally worth it. Especially if certain tresholds are made. (Against 4 enemies with 50 hp, doing 15 damage to everyone with a fireball is often better than doing 30 to a single one (with limited resources), if you have 2 allies that each can do 20 damage to a single target without spending resources.
Yes, both now need to focus on one enemy, to down them. But on the next turn, a second fireball will bring 2 others down to 20 hp left, so your teammates can spread out and down 2 more.
Or if they spread damage on their first turn, and spread damage on their second turn, all 4 enemies are dead after 2 turns.
Doing 30 damage to one enemy however only allows one to be killed on round 1, another is hit by 20 damage. 30 damage on the next round finishes the damaged enemy, another enemy only gets down to 10 hp left.
So in this scenario your high single target damage was way straightly inferior tonyour area damage.
Of course that scenario was constructed, but it is not unlikely to have similar wcenarios in actual games.